Sofia Vergara Freezing Her (Perfect, Perfect, Perfect) Eggs

Yes, the stars are doing it! 40-year-old Sofia Vergara revealed in the April issue of Vogue that she has to watch what she eats because she’s seeing a fertility specialist and taking pills and hormone injections to prepare for egg retrieval, in order to freeze them for use at a later date.

The Modern Family star explains:

They want to get as many eggs as they can because usually you produce them but they're not good. They have to be perfect, perfect perfect ones. My boyfriend [Nick Loeb] is 37, younger than me, never had kids.

Vergara isn’t the only celebrity embarking on “social egg freezing,” which is now being promoted as a way for women to pursue a career and delay childbearing until a more convenient time. Kim Kardashian (32) and Coco Austin (33), wife of rapper Ice-T, have also gone through the procedure, and talked about it publicly.

What’s next? I can imagine an egg-freezing reality TV show, with 24-hour-a-day cameras chronicling women injecting themselves with hormones, detailing every emotional reaction and trip to the clinic. The climax: an announcement of who produced the most “perfect” eggs.

But egg extraction isn’t really a laughing matter. The hormones that “shut down” the ovaries can cause long-term debilitating symptoms. The hormones used to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs can also have serious side effects, though they are fortunately rare; several women have died from complications of ovarian hyper-stimulation. The egg extraction procedure itself, in which a needle is inserted into a woman’s reproductive organs to suck out eggs, can also be risky and can lead to scarring and ovarian damage.

When women are facing medical procedures that can cause infertility, such as chemotherapy for cancer treatment, they may find these risks worthwhile. Extracting and freezing eggs for social reasons – so that a woman could pursue her career or wait for "Mr. Right" to come along before defrosting – raises a different set of ethical considerations. In short, social egg freezing is nothing to be taken lightly.

In other “egg-related news,” scientists say they are developing the capability to turn human eggs into powdered form, skipping the inconvenience and cost of storing them in expensive cryo-preservation facilities. A woman could conveniently store her egg sachet in her lingerie drawer, or in her kitchen cabinet next to her cinnamon and other spices. Simply add water, sperm, find the turkey baster in the kitchen drawer, and voila. Ahhh…the modern conveniences of reproduction without all the mess and fuss! Just be careful which spice you reach for when cooking up that romantic breakfast for two.

Your cavalier and facetious attitude towards fertility issues is not what one would expect of an educated woman. Sofia Vergara's case is one thing, but Kim Kardashian freezing her eggs is clearly due to anovulation and a biological abnormality at her young, and relatively fertile age.

With the work you've done in Genetics and Fertility, I would expect a greater knowledge and sensitivity to the plethora of reproductive issues that women face today, which are becoming increasingly common. Furthermore, I found your angle judging women who wish to prolong their fertility, either focusing on their career, or waiting for a suitable partner, borderline misogynistic. Men have the luxury of remaining fertile up to 20 years longer than women. Since we live in an age where women do not stay at home barefoot and pregnant, but are making their mark in the workplace, it is neither unethical nor inequitable to attempt to prolong fertility in patients with limited/impaired fertility, or to improve chances of fertilization in patients in the upper limits of child-bearing age.

I agree that in situations where women are undergoing superovulation at a considerable risk in a very advanced age, patients, autonomous as they may be, must be informed as to the choices they are making. Additionally, it is important to pose the question of ethics when women far beyond their 40s are starting families, but I would expect a more balanced and issue-sensitive article from a woman of your academic pursuits.

Thank you for your comment. Yes, this particular article is written tongue-in-cheek, as opposed to my other more academic articles on assisted reproductive technologies. Of course, having done hundreds of interviews with women seeking treatment for infertility, I am certainly sensitive to the traumas that women experience in that process. I have also written an as-yet unpublished book about the experiences of single women and lesbian couples creating families through ARTs. But medical infertility is not the topic of this discussion.

Social egg-freezing, in my opinion, is not the answer to women's ticking biological clocks. The fact that "social egg freezing"--as opposed to egg freezing for medical purposes--is being so strongly promoted in the media as the answer to the struggles women face in balancing career and family is disturbing.

It was not my intent to judge; of course women make complicated decisions in their lives. However, the long-term and short-term risks of egg harvesting are abhorently under-studied and under-reported. There are serious complications that can occur, for example moderate to severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, is common. Several deaths have been reported due to OHSS. Women have also been rendered infertile due to damage to their ovaries and other organs during the retrieval process. These occurences are rare, but they do exist and do need to be addressed. There is no way women can make informed decisions about their uses of the technology when the research on the risks doesn't exist, or isn't reported.

I don't see egg-freezing and "rescheduled" childbearing as the answer to women's challenges. What would be hepful is promoting work, social, and family policies that are more beneficial to working mothers.

For the record, your reference to my piece as "borderline mysogynistic" is ridiculous. Further, I would expect an educated response would not launch personal attacks, but rather stick to the issues.

I can only imagine the sex battles of the future... Human egg trade (possibly illegal as well), men seizing the opportunity to be fathers through surrogacy, gay parenthood, and so on... And let's not forget the eternal question of custody. Are human eggs going to be treated as property, or as "future" humans? Not that I feel one way or the other (maybe more in one way), but here is where biology, law and religion may intersect.

BTW, I'm not a man, but if I were, I wouldn't give a single damn about Kim Kardashian... In fact, it'll be better if she didn't have children. Sonia Vergara on the other hand... ;)

Egg-freezing isn't nearly as fantastical as the article seems to suggest. I think egg freezing is a great idea though-although at present it's far too expensive for the average woman. It's not so much about "waiting for Mr. Right/Perfect" (come now, I think most women know he doesn't exist!) as it is allowing a woman who wants kids to have a career rather than sacrifice either her job or her family time. While no one can work ten hours a day and spend tons of time with kids, egg-freezing allows women to get in a comfortable spot before making those sacrifices-and I think that's great.

if one wants to raise children in an optimal environment, those sacrifices have to be made eventually. Having had children in my early 20s and then an other in my late 30s, you couldn't persuade me (or my husband) to do what we did back then at the ages we are now. Even my "AMA" (Advanced Maternal Age) pregnancy in my late 30s was much rougher than my pregnancies in my 20s, as was the physical side of raising babies and small children in an older body. I had a lot more patience at 38, but a heck of a lot more energy at 24 and 26!

I made my sacrifices early in my life, putting of using my career (although still doing some work, research and ongoing education) when my children were still able to be conceived easily and my pregnancies were not as high risk as they would be at the age I am now.

Honestly, I loved the "sacrifice" if staying home with my children when they were young (even though my blossoming career had to be put on hold a second time, when I surprisingly became pregnant at 37) but, at this point in my life, I can't imagine just STARTING my family. My days in Maternal Infant Care are rewarding, but do wear me out. I have the luxury of going home at the end of the day to children who can feed themselves, toilet themselves and can use language well to discuss what they need or what their day was like. I have few physical chores to perform for children this age (unless you count driving to the mall and/or attending performances. Quite different than the nonstop dealing with active infants, toddlers and preschoolers.)

I also work with a number of mothers who have "put off" childbearing until late in life. I do need to stress that not one mother over 40 I have worked with had ANY idea just how all-consuming, physical and draining an infant and small children can be. Many require full time home based care for themselves and their babies, and many go back to work, in part, so the child can go directly to day care and, in their words they can "get back to the peace and quiet of my office." *sigh* (Their words, not mine.)

I feel for women who cannot conceive or maintain a pregnancy and need technology to do so, but I also feel that Nature's plan of ending our fertility in our 40s a pretty good one for most people.

The fact that after the mid 40s or so, even with technology, a successful conception and full term pregnancy is not guaranteed and the odds are high that even with frozen eggs, these women will EVER become mothers from their own womb. (Frozen embryos actually freeze and thaw better and are more viable than frozen eggs alone.)

I wonder if the clinics that are charging to do these hyperovulations, harvesting and freezing of these eggs are telling these women that after their mid 40s, becoming a mother from these frozen eggs and technologies is still a long shot? I've worked with women who have been through more than a dozen cycles of implantations with NO resulting full term viable pregnancies. Few were told the low chance of obtaining, when they froze their eggs in their 30s, what a viable pregnancy much later, would be.

Even with a successful pregnancy, the risks increase for both mother and baby as she ages. Then, she has the risks of running after toddlers while in menopause. No wonder so many of these mothers go back to their jobs so soon after the birth (even the ones who planned to stay home longer) and put even the smallest babies in the care of day care centers, nannies or oddly even in the care of their own aging mothers, while they go back to the jobs they "put off" childbearing to work on.

This is what I'm seeing from the inside, however. (Often from inside these women's homes, working with them and their infants.) I'm sure the fantasy of a perfect pregnancy, a perfect baby (who nurses like a pro from day one and then sleeps hours at a time with no problem) is intriguing and provocative, but the realities are so different.